Rheumatoid arthritis (“RA”) is an autoimmune disease characterized by chronic inflammation of the joints leading to progressive cartilage destruction and bone erosion. Patients with RA often suffer from inflamed joints with joint pain, stiffness, and swelling. More advanced forms of inflammation may cause the joint to lose its shape, alignment, and movement. RA has been treated for many years with a variety of medicines such as steroids and disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs). Some of these drugs are administered through injections or infusions. However, it is difficult for RA patients with compromised joint strength and mobility to manipulate available syringes to perform a self injection, particularly for viscous biologics and other drugs. Currently, some drugs are injected using conventional hypodermic syringes with a small needle cap. The conventional syringes are generally small, which makes holding or manipulating the syringe more difficult. Many of these syringes also do not provide patients with satisfactory handling and gripping structures.
In addition, typical syringes are difficult for some patients to de-cap and re-cap. Such syringes are difficult to manipulate, particularly patients suffering from joint swelling and pain as they must force their fingers to close in around a small needle cap to manipulate the cap.
Some medications are injected using an autoinjector. Standard autoinjectors include a small pen-cap like cap that houses a rubber needle cover that shields the needle of the device. Exemplary autoinjectors available today include HUMIRA® Pen and Enbrel SureClick®. However, in certain instances, the cap, when disengaged by the patient, fails to remove the rubber needle cover shielding the needle of the device. The patient then attempts to remove the rubber needle cover, which may lead to accidental needle stabs. As one can imagine, failing to remove the rubber needle cover exposes the patient to great danger and inconvenience. Certain autoinjectors also house the medication within an enclosed housing and do not provide a mechanism for viewing the volumetric level or color of the medication inside, thereby impairing the patient from confirming whether or not the right medication level is included in the autoinjector.
A more user friendly medication administering system is needed to address these and other problems posed by currently available autoinjector systems. There is a particular need for an autoinjector system that allows a patient to more easily administer a viscous drug, yet still provide increased safety as well as increased control. There is also a need for an autoinjector system that provides more ergonomic cap removing capabilities for patients with joint pain.